Yes, but not plenty of support or access to make it practical.
its _far_ cheaper to retrofit carparks than it is roofs. generally there is nothing under a carpark apart from tarmac. Unlike a roof which was designed for a specific weather loading (be it wind, rain or snow)
You also need to attach the panels to the roof, its generally simpler to bolt into tarmac compared to bonding to a weather proof seal.
This isn't something that's particularly obvious unless its pointed out, poly tunnels work on two fronts:
1) extend the growing season/climate control
2) scatter direct light into bright ambient light meaning that plants aren't scorched.
"leafy" plants like pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers etc "wilt" when in direct sun. they go floppy to stop evaporation. THis means they don't grow as fast. If you even out that light so its not directly heating the living shit out of the leaves, they grow faster, because they have less time in stress.
depends on how its done, but almost certainly yes.
soil is a living thing, and varies by location. Clay, loam, sandy, etc etc. Then there is a layer of fungus that forms filaments. The roots of the plants grow into this, and then the invertebrates move shit about creating voids and pockets of nutrients.
ploughing can be disruptive to this. but more likley pumping pesticides and herbicies, along with moving the water table causes it to die off leaving only part of the biome behind.
Basically think of it like your intestines. You can live with a "clean"[1] gut, but you'll have the shits constantly, which'll make you dry and windy. Same with soil.
> cut hay when the ruminants are gone for a season.
But surely only certain places need to do this? for the UK, you need to make hay for the winter, assuming that your meadows flood, or are otherwise muddy. But if your in one of the more temperate areas of the southern USA, surely you don't need to do that?
Up here in Scotland (can't speak for England, it's half a day's drive south of me just to get to the border, but watch Clarkson's Farm) we tend not to make hay very much these days. Mostly we make silage, which is where you cut long grass but instead of allowing it to dry into hay you bale it up while it's still green and wrap it in plastic sheeting. It undergoes anaerobic fermentation, which preserves a lot more of the nutrients, and it doesn't spontaneously combust if it's still a tiny bit damp when you store it.
The silage that you get, then, is basically like a kind of grass sauerkraut, and smells exactly like you'd expect.
That combined with "draff" - distillery mash, the spent malt from brewing "pot ale" for making whisky, and a certain amount of shredded sugar beet tends to make up the majority of winter fodder.
Draff is great because it's still fermenting slowly and generating a lot of heat, so the cows are eating hot food in the winter. It's mostly the fibrey bits of the barley malt, which we can't eat but which cows and sheep - having cellulase in at least one of their stomachs - do incredibly well on. It's absolutely no use for anything else, humans can't eat it and it doesn't really compost down. It just rots, stinks, and emits masses of carbon dioxide and methane when it does. Far better for the environment to lock all that up in a cow.
Ideally your fields don't flood because you plant crops in the autumn that stay in the ground over winter to germinate in the spring, and if they get flooded that's it, you've lost the lot.
You tend not to see soya-based or other leguminous food here very much, because it's expensive, it has to be shipped halfway round the planet, and it's ineffective - you get shitty meat that no-one wants to buy.
You need the cows to graze pasture, chew up the grass, break down all that tough cellulose and poo it out as incredibly highly refined fertiliser.
We eat, just about everywhere in the world, because there's six inches of earth, it rains sometimes, and cows and pigs shit solid gold.
A pile of solid carbohydrates (grass) can rot and go largely to water and released gases OR it can be eaten by an animal and goto some water, some gases, some poo, and a reasonable amount of energy and some conversion to meat for growth.
> A pile of solid carbohydrates (grass) can rot and go largely to water and released gases OR it can be eaten by an animal and goto some water, some gases, some poo, and a reasonable amount of energy and some conversion to meat for growth.
That meat gets eaten and largely turned into poo and gas (as byproduct of using up that stored energy), yeah? You're sequestering it maybe for a few years; meat cows live about two years.
> “Kangaroos have a very different stomach from that of ruminants such as sheep and cows,” Professor Clauss said. “We think that the methane is low because of the way food moves through the kangaroo stomach, and not because of a unique gut fauna.”
> Dr Munn and Professor Clauss are critical of efforts to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant livestock by replacing their gut fauna with that from kangaroos or other low-methane emitting animals, which they believe is unlikely to succeed.
So yes, you're correct - I'm not raising roos in Scotland, but we do look into ruminants, biomes, etc here.
These are complex chains that make up the surface level carbon cycle. Not every path leads to carbon dioxide / methane production, the gas creation ratios can be tweaked by the paths taken.
The problematic carbons are those that are additional - those once buried across the course of millions of years, some millions of years ago and now being bought to the surface in an extremely short timescale (one century and half, roughly)
This all goes to your question if you care to look into it.
> No one raise kangaroos here, they raise themselves…
In Scotland?
> The problematic carbons are those that are additional - those once buried across the course of millions of years, some millions of years ago and now being bought to the surface in an extremely short timescale (one century and half, roughly)
Meat production accounts for somewhere between 15 and 20% of human emissions. It is a significant part of the problem.
> the gas creation ratios can be tweaked by the paths taken.
To a point. Producing and consuming meat is gonna emit carbon. This isn’t disputable.
I just don't think the author really has any clue.
they seem to think that debt markets are infinite. "There's Still Plenty Of Capital To Raise"
> The ones that have issued public debt, like Alphabet and Meta, have excellent bond ratings. If they need more capital, they won't struggle to find people to give them a loan.
Yes, and that bond rating is based on the idea that they really don't have that much debt, and have a net profit of something like 30%. If they hoover up a load of debt, the rating will plunge.
> I don't think the rhetoric about the AI bubble is really about finances
Its exactly about finances. The market participants that are not bollocks deep in fake Private Equity valuations are worried about circular debt obligations that are off books. The SEC has been rather lenient about reporting of non-traditional obligations (hence why spaceX was allow to do what ever the fuck it did)
For example anthropic has about 450 billion in non-cancellable obligations. the S-1 puts it at 895 billion. all of that is someone's debt.
If openAI are doing the same thing, thats pretty close to 1.6trillion in debt, both for the same customers, at the time when customers are going "hmm this isn't giving us what we hoped for the price"
Agree. CDS on the debt of several players here is getting expensive. Debt markets are getting less promiscuous quite quickly, just when even more money is needed.
It could be that a slowing of data centre build (and hence a slowing in the finance needed) takes the heat out of the situation avoiding a dramatic burst. Even then there will be casualties. If someone knows who and when ... they could do very well. More likely, Microsoft and Google will buy up anything distressed that's worth having.
The biggest metric is that anthropic make ~$2 for every $1 of compute.
Two things:
1) it requires a massive money pit to make that compute worth anything
2) it requires charging a premium price
To compare to two previous bubbles; railways in the UK and USA.
running trains was really quite cheap and engines weren't expensive per passenger served. Compared to stage coaches, the number of staff needed was < 50%. the Massive fucking problem was that it needed GDPs worth of money to make the railway in the first place. Moreover as more railways were put in it significantly altered profitably of railways near them. Lines that were there for produce moving suddenly lost profitably because the produce they were moving fell out of fashion
Anthropic's S-1 filing. I don't think the parent is necessarily posing contradicting numbers, but removing the benefit of the doubt I was giving anthropic when it comes to inference costs.
I agree the valley is in a bubble, but I wouldn't agree with the self flagellation. That would imply a level of self understanding that would require repentance.
One of the big issues with silicon valley (or how I see it) is the lack of ability to look out side and ask why something is the way it is, before trying to slap technology on it.
The smell of money which distorts people's reality to carry on doing something that looks and sounds like a disaster, is too strong.
Also the "move fast, break things" motto. These people are literally incapable of slowing down to begin with, much less use that time for self-reflection.
Marc Andreessen: "Yes, zero introspection, the less the better. Why introspect? Just move forward, go take action. I find that those who dwell on the past often get stuck in the past. This is a big problem, both at work and at home."
> That would imply a level of self understanding that would require repentance. One of the big issues with silicon valley (or how I see it) is the lack of ability to look out side and ask why something is the way it is, before trying to slap technology on it.
We're talking about adults here, let's not infantilize and remove agency from them. It's not reasonable to treat as an accident the repeated disruption of regulated industries with the "old laws don't apply because I added computers" playbook. Bad behavior absolutely demands repentance and punishment. To say otherwise is a massive moral hazard that guarantees more harm, failing to counter the "smell of money" with reasonable caution.
> let's not infantilize and remove agency from them.
I think the issue is, that a lot of people in silicon valley are sheltered teenagers. Thinking back to my time in a FAANG, the thing that constantly surprised me is how naive a lot of people were. A lack of understanding of American politics, poor attention span and a general lack of grounding in the local community.
A large part of the harm that arose from the FAANGs is down to people genuinely not being able to step back and go "oh yeah, bad people might..."
Then, on top of that you have people in positions of power who actively exploit this naivety to get their own way.
I really must stress that I am not asking or implying that its not their fault. But we have to tackle the sausage factory of stupid that is being fed to silicon valley, mostly on a lie that their startup will make them rich.
I think it's telling how often even on HN (and linked articles) there is talk about "humans" doing this or that - when it becomes clear that the discussion is not even about everyday Americans or people from other Western countries, let alone the non-Western world - but just WASP people in Tech.
its _far_ cheaper to retrofit carparks than it is roofs. generally there is nothing under a carpark apart from tarmac. Unlike a roof which was designed for a specific weather loading (be it wind, rain or snow)
You also need to attach the panels to the roof, its generally simpler to bolt into tarmac compared to bonding to a weather proof seal.
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